Hilary Putnam's argument against metaphysical realism (commonly referred to as the "model theoretic argument") has now enjoyed two decades of discussion. 1 The text is rich and contains variously construable arguments against variously construed philosophical positions. David Lewis isolated one argument and called it "Putnam's Paradox".2 That argument is clear and concise; so is the paradoxical...

This paper proposes an interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths that considers saṃvṛti and paramārtha-satya two visions of reality on which the Buddhas, for soteriological and pedagogical reasons, build teachings of two types: respectively in agreement with (for example, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths) or in contrast to (for example, the teaching of emptiness) the categor...

In his article "Nietzsche and the Knowledge of the Child at Play: On the Question of Metaphysics" Johannes Welfing raises the question of a Nietzschean metaphysical presence (did Nietzsche define the essence of life and of being and thus also implicitly establish an imperative about the way in which one should lead one's life, or did he refrain from all definition, truth, system or law whatsoev...

The upsurge of spiritual energies encircling our planet at this present time, has resulted in an awakening in humanity of the existence of higher realities. Whatever the cause of this spiritual conflagration in the hearts and minds of humanity may be, the effects of its pulsation are readily apparent in the interest taken by the general public in the many metaphysical arts and sciences that wer...

Recent work on analyticity distinguishes two kinds, metaphysical and epistemic. This paper argues that the distinction allows for a new view in the philosophy of logic according to which the claims of logic are metaphysically analytic and have distinctive modal profiles, even though their epistemology is holist and in many ways rather Quinean. It is argued that such a view combines some of the ...

Many philosophers hold that all dispositions must have independent causal bases. I challenge this view, hence defending the possibility of bare dispositions. In part 1, I explain more fully what I mean by "disposition," "causal basis," and "bare disposition." In part 2, I consider the claim that the concept of a disposition entails that dispositions are not bare. dispositions necessarily have d...

1. Consider the basic outlines of the mind-body debate as it is found in contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The central question is “whether mental phenomena are physical phenomena, and if not, how they relate to physical phenomena.” Over the centuries, a wide range of possible solutions to this problem have emerged. These are the various “isms” familiar to any student of the deba...